Author: Gary Hoffman

We’ll never know exactly how Handel’s first opera, Almira, Kˆnigin von Castilien, appeared at its 1705 premiere in Hamburg.

A glance at the ROH programme which accompanies this new production of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana reveals a striking number of ‘role dÈbuts’; evidence that, since its Coronation-commissioned revelation in 1953, this opera has had a relatively quiet 60 years – hyperbolically announced as ‘one of the great disasters of operatic history’ at its troubled opening.

The Importance of Being Earnest , Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas AdËs conducting the London premiere.

‘Beauty is the one form of spirituality that we experience through the senses.’ In Thomas Mann’s, Death in Venice, Plato’s axiom stirs the hopes of the aging, intellectually stale poet, Gustav von Aschenbach, that he may rekindle his creativity.

There is a sense in which it all began in London, Puccini having been seized in 1900 with the idea of an opera on this subject after watching David Belasco’s play here.

I suppose it was inevitable that, in this Britten Centenary year, the 66th Aldeburgh Festival would open with Peter Grimes.